Deadline at Dawn полностью

“No, I’m all right now. Let’s go up, so we can put on a little light, get rid of this blame darkness. That’s what did it, mostly.”

They went up the stairs. It was all right now that she had him with her, she wasn’t frightened any more.

“Funny we should both come back here like this, almost together. No luck either, hunh?” she surmised.

“Washed up. I came back to get a second start.”

“That’s what I was out for too.”

They didn’t ask each other about their experiences. They hadn’t paid off, so there was no profit in repeating them. There was no time, either; that was the main thing.

When the lights went on, they scarcely glanced at the form on the floor, either one of them. They had gotten so far past that point now. Just a glimpse out of the corners of their eyes, of something black with a white shirtfront, was enough, so long as it showed them it was still there. She thought, How quickly you get used to the presence of death in a room. That’s why those people who sit up with them all night never turn a hair. She’d never been able to understand their ability to do that until now.

It was the first one she’d ever seen, and yet all the awe had already worn off. She already found herself moving about the room and unconcernedly deviating a little from that particular place each time, no more. As one would to avoid treading on a sleeping dog or cat.

They were at a loss. They’d hit rock-bottom. They were blocked. They could read the knowledge in one another’s eyes as they looked at one another, but they tried to keep from saying it, from admitting it aloud. His evasion took the form of moving restlessly about, as though he were accomplishing something, when they both knew he wasn’t. He went to the bedroom-entrance, put on the light in there, stood looking about, as though desperately trying to discern something that was not there to be discerned. Then he came out again, went to the bathroom-entry, lighted that up, did the same thing there.

It was no use. It was hopeless, and they both knew it. They’d squeezed the last drop of muted testimony out of this place that there was to be had from it. They’d squeezed it dry.

Her sense of frustration took a more passive form. She stood still. It revealed itself only in the fingers of her hand, resting on the back of one of the chairs; those kept rippling like the fingers of a typist upon an unseen typewriter.

Suddenly something happened to the silence. It was gone, and they hadn’t done it.

“What’s that?”

Fright was like an icy gush of water flooding over them, as from some burst pipe or water-main; like a numbing tide rapidly welling up over them from below, in some confined place from which there was no escape. They were like two small things — two mice — trapped in an inundated cellar, and carried around and around, still alive but helplessly swirling, on the surface of the whirlpool before they finally went under.

Fright was the muted pealing of a bell. A tiny, softened t-t-t-ting, t-t-t-ting, over and over. Somewhere unseen around them, hidden, but pertinent to them, having to do with them, having to do with this place they were in.

After the first needle-like shock, they were motionless, only their eyes tracing it in frightened flight, now to this side, now to that, each time too late. It was like a wasp, buzzing elusively around their heads, while they held still, trying to identify it, trying to orient it, to isolate it. It was everywhere, it was nowhere. T-t-t-ting, t-t-t-tling, soft, velvety, but unending.

“What is it, a burglar-alarm?” she breathed. “Have we touched something we shouldn’t—?”

“It’s from over here — the bedroom. There must be an alarm-clock in there—”

They shot for the entrance, mice coursing on the tide of fright. There was a small folding-clock on the dresser. He picked it up, pummelled the top of it, held it to his ear.

T-t-t-ting, t-t-t-ting— It was no nearer than before, it was everywhere at once, a ghost-trilling.

He put it down, ran back again the other way. She after him.

“The doorbell, maybe. Oh God, what’ll we do?” She shuddered.

He ran down a few steps, stopped on the stairs, listening.

“No. It’s coming from two places at once. It’s coming from down there, but it’s also coming from up here behind us—”

She stopped him. “It’s no good, it’s dark down there, you’d never find it. Come back, we’ll try up here again—”

They ran back into the bedroom again, the drowning mice.

“Let’s try closing the door,” she said. “That may tell us which room—”

She swung the door to. They listened. It went on undiminished, unaltered, unaffected by the closing-off.

“It’s right here in this bedroom with us, we know that much now— Oh, if it would only stop a minute, give us a chance to collect our faculties—”

He’d dropped to the floor on hands and knees, was padding lumberingly this way and that, animal-like.